


Next to You

by terebi_me



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Adorable Max, Consent is Sexy, Enthusiastic Consent, Erotica, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Feminist Themes, Fingering, Healing, Healing Sex, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Max was a cop once, Medicine, My First Work in This Fandom, Porn with Feelings, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Psychological Trauma, References to Shakespeare, Romance, Scars, Sharing a Bed, Song Lyrics, a woman who knows what she wants, adorable furiosa, glimmer of hope, lovemaking, made-up Furiosa backstory, snuggles, stoned Furiosa, stoned Max, very Australia, vivid descriptions of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:23:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4604871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terebi_me/pseuds/terebi_me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set immediately after the end of MM:FR. Max doesn't make it very far when he tries to leave. Back at the Citadel, he and Furiosa recover from their injuries - and their traumas - together. First chapter is rated Mature; later chapters shamelessly Explicit, because that's how I roll.</p><p>Edited to gift this story to the ones who have rocked, thrilled, scared, aroused, and otherwise inspired me in this fandom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [proprioception (lesracines)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=proprioception+%28lesracines%29), [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/gifts), [ArwenLune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/gifts), [becdot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/becdot/gifts), [bonehandledknife (ladywinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/gifts), [palimpsestus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Max and Furiosa come to be in bed together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: Chapters edited 8/27 and 9/7... Forgive me; I am my own beta, and the last two chapters were written with a very painful shoulder injury... mistakes were made. And, more importantly, corrected.

 

_Well, am I getting closer? Will I ever get there?_

_Does it even matter? Do I really need it?_

_Wish that I'd remember and I'm on the outcome_

_(this could be the day that we push through)_

-Tame Impala, “Apocalypse Dreams”

 

 

Thing about it is, he doesn’t remember falling.

One minute Max was walking steady, trying to knife through the thick blanket of exhaustion to sort out his next move, through the swaying and shambling hordes of Wretched surrounding him, touching him, unavoidable. He hadn't looked away until the edge of the platform hid her face from view; even being jostled paled in importance against the need to keep that contact, solid, unbroken, until the platform sliced it off. Clean. A neat amputation that didn't even hurt yet. Then he could walk away like he needed to. Death trod in his footsteps, and there was just too much of a chance that this place could survive—but it damn well wouldn't if he stuck around.

Used to sharp endings. This one probably the most merciful.

He turned and sought the horizon. The gray and swaying horizon...

Then it was dark and he was swaying side to side and back and forth, face down, attention scattered between searing stars of pain in a dozen separate parts of his body. He remembers how hard he gagged, and how nothing at all came out. He screamed, too. That came out. He remembers hearing it, wondering who the fuck was making that bloody noise, while, at the same time, his own throat hurt like he’d swallowed shrapnel. He struggled against the darkness, against this fresh nightmare.

Then, swimming awake, propped at an angle against a hard surface, with the worst taste he had ever had in his mouth, but he couldn't be sick, couldn't move; restrained, in chains again. Disappointment crushed him. Bloody fool of a bloodbag; he remained in the hell he thought he'd escaped. Seen a woman's eyes in passing, and his mad mind made up a whole journey for the two of them, together. Populated it with the faces of War Boys and memories of women and violence and the road and everything that died. Only explanation that made sense...

Even despair was too distant to comfort him in inevitability. Loneliness and terror had caught him at last.

Somehow, he missed them. The rig crew. Their eyes, their foolish hope.

He missed her...

{}{}{}{}

_Cause I’m a man, woman_

_I’ll never be as strong as you_

\- Tame Impala, “Cause I’m a Man”

 

Now he returns slowly to himself. Gently. (When was the last time he had awoken gently?) Lying face down now. Somewhere cooler, with soft air. And the pain of his busted-up body, though still in existence, doesn’t trouble him, doesn’t belong to him. It’s as though it’s in another room. He gratefully ignores it, preferring his other senses.

Eucalyptus, cutting through everything like a keen green knife.

Under that… old books. He smells that rare and particular mold. Books, all around him.

Oh, and blood. Always, everywhere, that scent, like it’s the smell of the inside of his head. Not flowing or bursting, now; banked, dried. Healing. He doesn’t know if it’s his own blood. He doesn’t feel like he’s bleeding, or having the blood siphoned out of him into someone else.

He also smells water. Wet soil. Faintly—just barely there—something softer green growing. He takes a deeper breath; he is not imagining this, though it could be a memory, too.

But—stronger than memory—unmistakable— _near_ —he smells Furiosa.

Not just the lizard-brain pheromone jolt of _woman_. _Her_ particular scent. Unforgettable, unique, boiling off her skin in battle, dripping fear and adrenaline, and, later, pain. It had embedded itself into his mind when he was close to her body, when he’d acted on thoughtless instinct, using whatever tools were at his disposal to keep her from dying. Hadn’t thought, _I am saving her life_. Nothing so noble or selfless. Only, _Don’t die, Furiosa—I will give you my body and my blood and my spirit but you cannot—you WILL not fucking die on me now._

 _Please don’t leave me._  

But there she is, right next to him.

He turns his head across soft, worn fabric, and ignoring the pain in his forehead as the skin tightens, opens his eyes.

Furiosa, indeed.

Alive.

She’s asleep, which is how he knows that he's not dreaming. He has never dreamt of anyone asleep, unmoving; even if they’ve been ripped to pieces or flayed to the bone, they’re awake, looking at him. Talking to him. Even in bits, body parts wriggling, jerking on the roadway—reaching for him—desperately reaching out from death—

But Furiosa is alive, sleeping, and whole. Or, as whole as she was before. She’s still only got half a left arm, mottled in bruises and burns from bare shoulder to stub. The metal prosthesis is gone but she still bears its pinch-cuts and calluses. Her torso is sheathed in a thin, gray, sleeveless, patchwork cotton smock, stained brown on both sides where her wounds had leaked blood. Her breathing is tentative and noisy, but regular. Steady.

Chapped lips parted, dense eyelashes spread on her bruised cheeks like dark moths. With a jolt of delighted surprise, for the first time, he can see she’s got freckles on her button nose, and the steel-gray threads in the soft brown pelt of her hair. 

She snores. 

He feels himself smile. 

They’re on a bed together, close, but with space, air, between them. The sweet air that smells of blood and books and medicine, and a fleeting trace of growing leaves. Things coming back to life. Not restrained, not tied or chained down; just resting next to each other. 

“Re... new... al,” Max mutters wonderingly. 

“Oi, you. Back to sleep,” comes a girl’s voice. 

It isn’t Furiosa, who slumbers on, letting out another ragged snore. Max turns his head, sees the girl sitting nearby. Recognizes her. One of Immortan Joe’s wives. She of the hair as red as match phosphorous, a pair of round-lensed goggles perched on top of her head, holding her hair out of her face. She wears a sleeveless brown tunic that reaches her hips, black leather jeans not too dissimilar to Max’s own, instead of the flimsy muslin strips. Stout motorcycle boots, too. The girl who looked after the War Boy, drawn to him like lovers or siblings. For a long moment Max can’t remember her name, but as she comes closer, smoothly, not afraid of him at all, disconnected pieces of knowledge slot into place. Pistol tucked into the waistband of her leathers. She knows what she is doing.

Capable. That's right.

She puts something cool to his lips—a metal cup containing a fresh, liquid smell—and, gripped with sudden terrible thirst, Max’s mouth takes a gulp of the contents. It’s not water—he doesn’t know what it is, but it's that bitterness again, at once gritty and slimy and sludgy, and he knocks the cup sideways out of Capable’s hand.

Still unafraid, she just picks up the cup, rolls her eyes impatiently, and says, over her shoulder, “It’s fine.” Max can’t see anything else—a sudden slap of light gets in his eyes and he flinches sharply away from it. When he finally lowers his arm from his eyes, he sees Capable tipping the cup carefully at Furiosa’s lips. In her sleep, Furiosa trustingly swallows and swallows again, drinking as instinctively as a baby. 

“What are you doing? W-what is that?” Max demands. 

Even in his own ears, his voice is a slow, purring drawl. He sounds... comfortable. He sounds fucking _stoned_ , is what he sounds like. Feels it, too. “What _is_ that stuff?” he repeats. 

“It’s what’s going to make the difference,” Capable says briskly. She pulls the cup from Furiosa’s mouth and gently dabs the corners of her lips with her scarf. “Relax. It’s done for now. You can sleep.” 

“I have to go,” he insists. “You'll all... die if I stay.” He can’t move. The bed holds him down like he’s glued there. Beside him, Furiosa sighs as if she’s been holding her breath for years, and her head droops down toward her shoulder. Her pale lips and cheeks flush a healthy bright rose. She's almost smiling. Max’s eyes sting. 

“Close your eyes,” Capable murmurs, low and hypnotic. And sort of lovingly annoyed, as if she’s been through this before. “Be still. Don’t flop around. She needs the rest even more than you.” She gently straightens Furiosa’s head on the stack of pillows that props her upper body at a slight angle, and tugs down on the thin gray garment covering her. Capable settles a threadbare blanket back over Furiosa's body, tucking her in at hip level. Below the injuries. So close that Max can feel the shuddering in her breath. 

Capable pours more liquid from a big clay jar into the metal cup, and holds it to Max’s lips. “Just water this time,” she says. “Drink it all.” 

He takes the cup into his own fingers, and looks down into it; clear liquid reflects his own face back at him, cheeks thin and drawn in contrast with his thick, blunt, rough lips. He gulps the water in one swallow and hands the cup back. “Where's _my_ blanket?” he says, voice pitched barely louder than a whisper.

Capable arches her eyebrow. “Do I look like I'm made out of blankets? Tuck yourself in close to her; she’ll keep you warm. You want to walk away from this? Sleep. Or you won’t make it. And neither will she.” Her face is sad and drawn, but kind, her mouth soft and red. “You stay right there.” She even smiles, and gives a faint laugh, as if remembering an enjoyable feeling. “Max. Suits you.”

The edges of the world go fuzzy, and Max blinks to try to clear his sight. On the second blink his eyes stay closed. He hears another disconnected moan that might be coming from him. The pain's gone, all of it. He's warm, he's cool, he's comfortable. He can't even smell blood anymore, only the sharp scent of that herbal concoction, the way it smells on Furiosa's breath, Furiosa's armpits, her dried sweat, the drug swirled all throughout her body's systems, throughout his, binding them together in the deep, sweet slumber.

{}{}{}{}

He’s not sure how long he’s been asleep. It is midday, after noon, but well before sundown. His head's still cottony from the medicine, but he fights the sedative effects, concentrating on the pain, pulling his body upright, sliding off the bed and standing next to it, resting his hand against the iron headpiece to prop him until he knows he's steady. He's got to piss so badly his belly aches.

Steady. His knee has a new brace on it, structured from short lengths of aluminum pipe, with leather fittings and hinges. Really expertly done. It's so light he would doubt its ability to do the job but for the fact that he's standing up, leg fully extended, with only an ache to remind him of the blasted ruin under the cloth binding the flesh under the brace. Slowly he realizes he's only wearing some kind of swaddling around his hips and crotch made of that same thin gray fabric; the rest of his body is bare.

“Ah, fuck me,” he says ruefully, mouth quirking sideways. “Now they've got me in a nappy.”

Only momentarily; fumbling his dick free of it makes the whole thing unravel and drop to his bare ankles. He can't care, shuddering as he drains his bladder into a barrel of sand a few steps away from the bed.

“Good.” A voice from the shadows. Not Capable this time; still female, but sharper. “So you're up. And pissing. That's half the battle. Take a shit, and you’re full-life.”

“I'm fine,” says Max, still urinating. He means it. All the pains, though much more present than before, have receded to manageable levels. His head rapidly and steadily clears. His heart feels solid in his chest, and as the urge to piss slowly subsides, that discomfort is replaced by hunger.

“She’s not fine. Not yet.”

He turns his head, seeking out the source of the voice until the face of the speaker comes into focus, half hidden in shadow several yards away. It's the tiny, fierce one. Skin like dirty honey; dark, hot, hostile eyes. Toast. He'll not forget that. She's looking at him now like she'd still love to put a bullet between his eyes and see it come out the back of his skull. She's got the knuckleduster tucked into her snug, light-colored shirt, metal glinting at the curve of her sternum. Like all of Joe's breeders she's as flat-chested as a child, and the realization makes him inwardly squirm.

Her voice again, bitter and growling. “How's your schlanger? You in any pain? Doesn't look like it.”

“What happened to me?” Max asks, finally emptied, taking a few tentative steps. He keeps his back to her. More aches spring into being, but it's strongest in his head, between the eyes and at the temple where the bolt pierced him.

“Road caught up with you,” Toast says. “Went down like a sack of pellets ten feet from the platform. We were in the air, looking down at you, and you dropped like a rock. At first I thought someone shot you. Got Furiosa settled; went back down for you. Your knee was the size of my head. _And_ you were having a fit. Thrashing around and puking like that's how you'd die.” She pauses, narrows her eyes. “I told them to put you out of your misery, but... I was outvoted.” She approaches, looks down into the bucket of sand. “You're not pissing blood anymore. Guess that's good.”

Max bends and picks up his nappy, winding and knotting it around his crotch and hips, then takes a few careful steps around the room to test his legs. Outside, above, crops are grown; he can smell damp soil drying, the scent of chlorophyll, and he takes great gulps of air into his lungs, savoring it, gorging himself on it before he thinks that perhaps he shouldn't. That he might miss this too much; it might make him soft. Distract him at just the wrong moment.

He could go. Should.

He examines the room's round door, the steel bars that would fix it into place if closed. It's not even a cage; it's what they had in banks, back in the Before. “This where he kept you?”

Toast sighs, just a bit, and wraps her arms around herself. “Yeah,” she says flatly.

“Well... He's in pieces now,” Max points out.

Toast gives a single grunt of laughter. “Inside the Wretched,” she says. “Raw. I'd puke. Never be that hungry, eat _that_ disease.”

“Because you're lucky. You were taken care of. How desperate have _you_ ever been?” Max muses, his voice without hostility or rancor.

But Toast stares at him, first in anger, then, softening, a sadness and a shame, but still a little pride, too. “You're welcome to the last hunk of raw Joe.”

With a quick huff of laughter, he returns to the iron-framed single bed, pushed against the far wall. On her side, up against the wall, Furiosa's shoulders have been propped on a large, rectangular cushion that had once been the seat of a couch. Her head and neck and legs are swaddled in blankets, but her torso's been left uncovered. Her closed eyes twitch with dreaming. A fresh tunic covers her, unstained, shorter; he can see a bit of one of her thighs, visible below the edge of the blanket.

“You put us together?” Max asks.

He wants to touch Furiosa, but Toast, and her little gun; only his fingers stretch out towards the woman on the bed, and stop in mid-air.

“Not my idea,” Toast says. “First only because there wasn't time to know what else to do. But when we moved you away, she started... goin' downhill. Fast. So we put you back. And then she started getting better again. You did too. Like... you were using each other to get better.” She gives a frustrated scoff. “We don't know. We're not the Organic. The Dag said to leave you be, stuck together. Like you're still givin' her your blood. Once a blood bag, always a blood bag, huh?”

“She shouldn't... be here,” says Max. He does touch her. Just his fingertips on her forehead. She is warm, but not feverish. Her skin's damp to the touch, like a fever just broke, leaving her in the calm, deep sleep of recovery. She feels strong, just at a touch. Warm and alive, all systems functioning.

“She made it,” Toast points out. 

“But not... in this place,” Max clarifies, his gaze trailing along the ceiling, the glass dome of the Vault, the words written in white paint, the scent of books instead of motor oil and guzzoline. “I don't want her to wake up and see that she's in this place. Not where women were... kept. ” 

“She _is_ a woman,” says Toast. 

“She's Furiosa,” says Max. He locks eyes with Toast. “Even if she _was_ one of—. Especially if. Once. Just—please. Anywhere but here.” He touches Furiosa again, stroking her forehead. In her sleep she smiles a little, drifts on. She has two black eyes, one worse. He did that; that's his fault. But it's thanks to her that he pissed blood. That one of his ears—he reaches up to it, feels a thick plug of gauze shoved into the hole, and pulls it free to see its tip coated in dried blood—is deaf now, and probably never to hear again. He wouldn't trade it. “Let's move her now. While she sleeps.” 

Toast tightens her mouth and frowns, but stands up from where she leaned against a wall, and moves the gun from her chest down to her waistband. She's in trousers now, too, War Boy togs, split hems dragging on the floor beside her bare feet. She’s so little, barely more than a child, no matter how she growls. “Let me go get Tipper and the Dag,” she says. “I don't trust that you won't drop her. We'll take her to the Tucker Mech's cave. Nobody in it right now. He must've gone with the war party.” 

Max grunts his assent, and when Toast disappears, he sits on the bed next to Furiosa, petting her forehead, her interrupted arm, his mind a gray static blur of relief. It’s difficult to leave her side to pull on some clothes (not his; black shirt, black canvas trousers cut short at the knees; they’re clean and feel decadently soft against his skin). 

There’s a cubbyhole in the rock, down a level from the Vault, next to the fissure where greens are hydroponically grown. The cave, a narrow tunnel bored into the rock, is open on both sides, without a door separating the room from the interior of the Citadel or the growing plants in view. Water vapor keeps the room cool and moist. The Tucker Mechanic had a proper bed, too, on a metal framework to keep the bedding off the floor, and a thick mattress stuffed with dried grass and hair and rags. Immortan Joe had taken proper care of the overseer of his crops. 

They take Furiosa there, carried on a blanket stretcher by two muscular men who, by their legs, are on the platform-raising crew. But not War Boys. On their way he doesn’t see a single one. The Dag flits in the background, not approaching Max, watching everything like a skittish but curious squirrel. Max goes ahead of everyone else, needing to check with his own eyes the safety of their path and destination. The Citadel is quiet now, though, half its population hollowed out by a single battle. Toast brings up the rear, her eyes no less restless than Max's own. Their passage is so quiet Max can hear the water pumps running through the stone at his side.

Even in daylight the Tucker Mech’s cavern is dark enough that Toast sparks up a lantern after the wheelclimbers depart. She carries in and sets down a clay jug of water, sand bucket, another bucket, empty, next to that. “Puke,” she explains, giving it a slight kick. Furiosa coughs faintly, but doesn’t wake. At the bed, Toast ensures that Furiosa remains half sitting up, piling every soft thing she can find under the older woman’s shoulder blades, tucking a thin woven blanket around her hips.

“I can, hmm, see to that,” says Max. 

“Oh, can you?” Toast replies caustically.

“Gonna... be...” He speaks tentatively, though he feels resolute. He lies on the bed next to Furiosa, making himself heavy so that she slides towards him, rolls toward him until they touch. “Right here.”

Toast's face softens, and she immediately frowns to erase it. “Fine,” she decides. “If she starts coughing, let her, but turn her aside to spit. If the coughing gets bad, give her a slug o' this.” None too gently, she hands Max the gourd full of herbal sludge. “And hold her until it stops. She starts bleeding, call for me. Give her water every few hours whether she's awake or not. I'll send some hot porridge for the both of you; try to get some of that down her, too. I’ll send someone to check on you at midnight. That’s some hours from now. You remember the sound of the time-chime, I’m sure.” 

Max grunts in acknowledgement, taking Furiosa's hand, interlacing their fingers and holding their hands together on her rising and falling belly. Toast gives a final, long-suffering sigh, takes the medicine out of Max’s hand and sets it on the floor next to the bed, and returns to the heart of the Citadel. Max doesn't even watch her go. If he's in danger, he's in danger, but right now, he will remain exactly where he is. He keeps Furiosa’s hand in his as exhaustion abruptly takes the wheel and sends him back to sleep. 

{}{}{}{}

_I was doing fine without you until I saw your eyes._

-Tame Impala, “The Less I Know, the Better”

 

At the midnight chime, they both wake.

At first, they stare at each other in fearful alarm, noses inches apart. The lantern has stayed lit, or has been lit again, casting a steady yellow-green light around the rough walls of the cave. Furiosa breaks the stalemate by widening her eyes dramatically, her lips curving in a hint of a smile. Max’s own face feels strange again; his cheeks have forgotten the movements, the position, trying to smile back. He’s rusty. When her smile grows, his finger reaches out to touch the dimple in her cheek. 

She catches his hand, like a whip’s tail curling around his wrist. But she just holds it still, instead of dislocating his arm; her eyes play across his face, and she still wears that enigmatic smile.

Her face has been washed thoroughly; her hand and arms, too, the brown tan faded into a golden sheen of color over the paleness of her skin. Even her hair has been scrubbed clean of grease and dust, so clean it shines. And Max, he can feel, is medical-clean, too. She seems to be just as baffled by that as he.  For certain, she looks dramatically different—as pretty, feminine, delicate, refined as one of the wives. She had to have been. God, she’s beautiful. He cannot guess at her age—she seems freshly young and strong, but also marked by experience, with lines radiating from the corners of her eyes and lightly sketched across her forehead. She’s lived at least as dark a life as Max. As he examines the silver threads in her hair, she releases his hand to touch his temple, and he knows there’s gray there, too. 

She huffs a small laugh and rolls her eyes. “Still alive,” she says. When he doesn’t answer, she adds, her voice shaking gently with uneven breath, “And somehow, still here. I saw you leave.” 

“Didn’t make it very far,” he replies, pointing to his bad-now-worse knee, all wrapped up in eucalyptus-stinking gauze, and a similar plug of it stuck into his ear. “Got dizzy, I guess.” 

“And how’d you end up here?” Furiosa asks, clearly amused. 

Max shrugs. “Little dark one jumped me. Drugged me up. I thought it was just water.” 

“Won’t fall for that one again,” Furiosa groans, in obvious discomfort. Max rapidly looks her all over, touching her wrist, her neck, her stump, her sternum. Furiosa rolls her eyes again. “Enough,” she commands, holding up her hand, still as quick as a snake. Max squints at her. “Just stiff. Think I’ve never been stabbed in the ribs before?” Furiosa sits up with a grimace, and gestures toward the clay jug. “Let me guess—just water?” 

“You need to sleep,” says Max. 

“You—” 

He places his hand on her chest again, pressing her down slowly but firmly, and she lets him do it, tired, grateful to relax again. “Spangled or straight, your choice, but sleep.” He hesitates, but his eyes don’t leave hers, and she looks at his lips to reduce the intensity of the gaze. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“ _You_ look fine,” Furiosa says. She grudgingly looks at, then angles her head toward, the medicine jug. “Just a little,” she directs. Max pours some of its contents into the metal cup, adds a little water to thin it out, and she drinks in slow, small, measured swallows. “You—mm—you _could_ go, you know,” she says. 

He just grunts, neither affirmatively nor in the negative; just an acknowledging sound. He takes the empty cup, and fills it again with water. Furiosa unprotestingly drinks it, then licks her lips, grimacing at the bitterness. “Ugh. Never does taste any better.” 

“Had it before?” Max asks.

“It’s this particular kind of Vuvalini mixture. For broken bones and childbirth. And severe wounds. It didn’t exist here, before. Organic didn’t believe in medicine; only drugs. And only Joe got those. You had some of this?” she asks, giving him back the cup.

“Yeah,” he says. He smiles at her again, eyes crinkled at the edges, lips curving just a bit, as if he doesn’t really want to. He pours more medicine into the cup, and takes a swallow himself. “What’s in it?”

“Sneezeweed, peppermint, lemon thyme, blackwood bark, hempseed oil, and dried redflower heads. The last part—very important.” She held up a mock-lecturing finger. “Oh, and the pure ethanol, to make it all hold together. Why it tastes like degreaser.” 

“Redflower?” he asks. 

She gestures with one hand, the stub waving around in the air as though it terminates in the other hand. “Big, furry blooms; thick, furry green stem? Dry the heads? I can’t remember the real name of them—“ 

“Poppies,” Max guesses. 

“That’s it,” she says. “I’d have thought they’d have all been used up by now.” She huffs out a breath. “Come closer,” she says, “I’m cold.”

Somewhat theatrically he stretches out beside her again, on the pallet of pillows made of the hair of heaven knows how many kidnapped blood bags. It makes her laugh, the medicine loosening her tongue, her mind. She untucks the blanket and spreads the edge over his hip. She won’t allow it for another day, but tonight—tonight it’s all right.

They rest beside each other, awake, Furiosa’s eyes closed, Max’s open, watching her. Amazed at her face. When she opens her eyes, the blue and green and gold of the rising dawn, he holds his breath as if afraid to startle her. She stares unblinkingly back at him, her expression puzzled, and she lifts her right arm, her hand, her fingertips briefly brushing his lips. The touch immediately withdraws, and Max frowns, hesitates, reluctantly swipes the tip of his tongue across his now-too-dry, too-sensitive lips. 

“Like an angel,” Furiosa murmurs. 

Max’s eyebrows lift in mild surprise. 

“I saw in a picture,” Furiosa clarifies. “In a book. In the Vault.” Her eyelids close, weary or remembering. “Your mouth.” When a fine, tense line appears between her eyebrows, Max decides on remembering. He reaches out and takes the hand she had just taken back, and holds onto it, not tight, but solid. Not going anywhere. Her eyes open again, reflecting the light. “They have wings,” she adds. “With feathers. Like birds.”

“Don’t want wings,” Max replies. 

Furiosa’s smile is slow and genuine. “Not when you’ve got wheels,” she says, a soft hint of hunger, of hard pride in her words. Too full of memories, his joints too sore from trauma, the taste of road dust still too much on his tongue, Max can’t feel joy at the thought like she can, but he smiles back at her, tilts his head in acknowledgment of the truth of her words. 

Because he hasn’t released her hand, she turns her attention to it, to his hand, lightly clasping their fingers together. She presses their palms together, glancing at how the length and thickness of his fingers dwarfs hers, but then checks his expression again, to see if he’ll gloat over his advantage. 

Instead he closely examines her hand, checking its multiples of cuts, scrapes, burns, and bruises as if he knows them all, and well. Suddenly self-conscious, she tucks her stump underneath her other side, wrist sliding into the space left by the uncorseted curve of her waist. 

Only then does she seem to truly realize that she is barely clothed at all—clad only in the patchwork smock, comprised of half a dozen other garments’ scraps, and a twist of dark cotton encircling her hips and genitals. 

But Max isn’t really so much better, not wearing so much more. The thin T-shirt and hacked-off shorts. And his feet are as bare as a wife’s, but broken, healing, hideous. Gnarled masses of bruise and vein and callus, black hollows where toenails had died and dropped off. The raiding party had walked and dragged him miles across the Waste after they’d got him. 

“You really should be dead,” Furiosa marvels. 

“Yeah,” Max agrees. 

She sighs, and strokes along the edges of his fingers with hers. “ _I_ should be dead.” 

“Nah,” says Max. The light’s low but he thinks she can see a flush of color rising onto her cheeks, and he gives a tiny shudder. A quiver, from her touch. “You shouldn’t. You should never be dead.”

“Immortan Furiosa,” she whispers.

They both chuckle.

“Immortan Max,” she says. Frees her hand, and traces the line of his eyebrow, the gap in it, that long-healed but persistent scar.

Max shakes his head, grabs her hand. “Don’t even joke.” 

“I can see _your_ face,” Furiosa points out. Like an engine cooling, Max pools back into relaxation, pressing the ridge of his orbital bone into Furiosa’s fingers, encouraging her touch. Nuzzling like a cat. 

“Your face,” he echoes faintly. He wants to say that he can’t believe it, that she looks not like an angel but a child’s doll with cupid lips and a button nose, and _that dimple_ , cute, like a child herself, a little child, a sprog almost. But her eyes, like acetylene ignited, like a raptor’s, scanning the horizon for something to end—nothing could be less childlike, more frankly terrifying. Even now, drugged to the gills, the holes that perforated her torso barely closed—if she wished she could easily tear his body to pieces, starting with his eyebrow—no, now his nose, now her touch tracing back to his lips. 

“Like Angharad’s,” she says. 

He doesn’t dare even grunt acknowledgment of that statement. His lips tighten, though, threatening to speak, or to kiss, but do neither, and Furiosa dreamily smiles and lifts her hand away.

“We’re alive,” she says, “somehow.”

“We worked at it,” Max grumbles. As much as her touch discomfited him, he wants it back now. 

But he waits until she reaches for him again.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awake, alert, and alive. A visit from Cheedo, the Dag, and the moon. Porridge, confessions, and kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been altered slightly.

As promised, they are checked on. One moment they lie wonderingly touching each other's hands and the details of their faces; in the next both freeze, holding their breaths until they can identify the source of the scraping and rustling approaching.

Enter into the low lantern light Cheedo and the Dag, arm in arm, obviously scared shitless, the Dag holding one of the big clay jugs for water, and Cheedo armed with a broken lance, the shaft about three feet long, burnt at one end, forming a lethal-looking black spear. They both still wear white, but much more of it, swaddled in patchwork layers of gauzy cotton, roughly knitted lace, bits of bleached T-shirts, whatever they could find. Up to the neck, down to the wrists and ankles. Curiously, despite their quivering anxiety, and being covered from chin to toes, they seem somehow freer, wilder, more alive, as if _more_ of them has been made visible.

As one, Max and Furiosa slide off their respective sides of the bed and onto the floor; Max crouches down below the lip of the bed frame, while Furiosa produces a length of rusted metal out of nowhere, holding it diagonally across her face so that her eyes glint behind the makeshift blade. “I'm ready and willing to kill,” she announces in her clear, steel-hard commander’s voice, “so no sneaking or I will bleed you out like a bandit.”

Cheedo gives a little shriek and hides her face in the Dag's shoulder, and both girls cower backward into the shadows. “No! Stop it; don't snuff us,” the Dag protests, trying to sound hard and scary, but coming across as a girl panicking about having been called on in class. “Just us. Please don't. I know you _would_.”

Furiosa relaxes with a deep sigh of impatience (and amusement) and a weary cough, and walks around the bed to where Max remains crouched, his eyes nervously flitting back and forth like he's watching rats scurry across the floor. “A signal is smart,” Furiosa points out. She sets the metal bar on the surface of the bed and drops her hand lightly onto Max's shoulder. “Stand down,” she murmurs. “Just girls.”

Max coughs hard. 

“Did we spook him?” Cheedo wonders, peeking into the light.

Under Furiosa's hand, Max's shoulder shakes. She stares at him, dimly remembering his dehydrated convulsions from before, when they had retrieved him from the ground, when they had to strap his arms down and bend him over so that he wouldn't choke on his own vomit. Instead of the chaos of a fit, though, he’s shaking rhythmically, up and down; she realizes that he's laughing. “Fool! They could run you through,” Furiosa says, grabbing the collar of his shirt and shaking him. Max only holds his hand to his mouth, his shoulders jerking in soundless hysterics.

“Is he struck stupid?” the Dag asks blankly.

“Basically,” Furiosa agrees. She takes his wrist, and, using his weight against him, flips him over so that he lands with a gentle bounce on the center of the bed. His eyes snap open, sighting the bright slat of metal, inches away from his face. Furiosa hisses in pain at the effort, but swallows a groan, and fixes the two younger women with a steely gaze. “As you can see,” she says evenly, “everything's under control.”

Cheedo stares at her. “You should be resting,” she admonishes.

“I’m all right,” says Furiosa.

The Dag stares wonderingly at the now dazed and motionless Max. “Everything in its right place,” she muses, “and God's in his hell.” Her long white hand rapidly crosses herself, then opens with a flicking motion, as if brushing off even the concept of Immortan Joe. “Max is in bed, and Furiosa’s getting well,” she adds, pleased at her own cleverness.

“You can stop worrying,” Furiosa says more gently. “I'll be up and about in the morning. Go. Bring me long bandages and bloodwood sap. But not until the sun is up. Got it?”

“Got it!” Cheedo nods. “We won’t come back until you're finished.”

“Cheedo!” The Dag giggles and pokes her friend. “Country matters!”

“What? No, I was—” Cheedo, so baffled she can barely hold onto her black spear, glances wildly back and forth between Furiosa and the Dag, and then at Max but quickly-quickly away, as if seeing him naked. “I didn't mean—” With a smile, Max very slowly sits up and moves the metal slat off the bed onto the floor, next to the empty bucket. Cheedo stares at the steel slat, her hands shaking, the back at Max, who stares back, putting his hands behind his head and stretching. “They're not going to...?” Suddenly her grip tightens on the black spear, strong and unwavering, and she glares at him. “Don’t you dare hurt her,” she hisses. “I will spike you with this. Spike you like a bug!”

Furiosa approaches her, grasping Cheedo’s shoulder with her hand, squeezing until Cheedo looks up at her face. Their gazes lock together, hard, uncompromising, neither backing down. “He’s not gonna hurt me,” Furiosa says, her voice low and calm. “He’d hurt himself before he hurt me. He’s here to take care of me. And I’m taking care of him.”

Her grip on Cheedo’s shoulder softens, becomes a clasp, then firm and gentle stroking with her fingers along the muscle. Slowly, Cheedo unwinds. Her spine relaxes, her lips parting, her gaze unlocking from Furiosa’s and going hazy and distant. Furiosa pulls her closer and touches their foreheads together. “He won’t hurt me,” she whispers. “Do you believe me?”

Cheedo looks up from under her eyelashes. “I want to,” she admits. “I’m just—I remember—” She shudders. Furiosa, grimacing, remembers too, that nightmarish time, maybe two hundred fifty days past, when Joe decided to spoil Rictus by giving him use of a wife as a plaything. Thankfully it hadn’t gone on long; unable to even be in the area, Furiosa had volunteered for a scouting run to get away from the horrors of the Citadel for a few days. When she returned, Rictus was as bellowing and lonely as before, Cheedo had been returned to the Vault, and Furiosa had not seen her again for almost two hundred days; and all the wives, and Miss Giddy, were pale and frozen silent for a long time after. They didn’t talk about it and Furiosa didn’t need to ask. That had been the last straw. Furiosa revised her escape plan to incorporate five more people.

Perhaps she had redeemed herself with them. Redeemed herself as Imperator. But she still owed herself redemption; a rewriting of reality; another, better way. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” Furiosa murmurs into Cheedo’s ear. She brushes her lips against the girl’s cheekbone, ever so gently, demonstrating that better way. “I won’t let it be that.”

Cheedo nods, but holds the black spear in a white-knuckled, determined grip.

Breaking into their moment, the Dag hands Furiosa the water jug, and returns to Cheedo’s side, taking her arm and holding her close. “His schlanger probably doesn’t even work,” the Dag opines, rolling her eyes and giving her tangled white hair a saucy toss.

“I hope it doesn’t,” Cheedo mutters.

“Bye, Cheedo.” Furiosa tilts her head toward the passageway back into the heart of the tower. But then she smiles a little, wryly, raising her eyebrows to underscore her authority. “And you,” she adds, to the Dag, “thank you.”

“Half of the moon's about to rise,” the Dag says over her shoulder, hustling Cheedo toward the door. “It'll look bigger than the sun from here. See me in the sky. It's me, you know.”

“Oh, you’re the moon now. I thought you were the north star.”

“The north star, and the moon at half. The Keeper of the Seeds told me so. So I bet it's true.”

Furiosa chuckles. “See you in a few hours.”

“Also a gazelle,” the Dag adds, and they are gone.

Furiosa waits until they are out of earshot, then gives out the moan of pain she'd held in her throat for what seemed like a social eternity. After she takes a long moment to relieve her bladder in the sand bucket, she returns to the bedside and sinks down on it, but remains sitting up for now; she knows that if she lies down, she'll stay that way for the foreseeable future, and she's only just gotten up. “Do you know how long I was out?” she asks.

“No idea,” Max grunts. “Days, I'm thinking. At least two. Two for me, I think. Maybe...” He rubs his jaw with his bandaged hand. “Maybe longer.”

Furiosa grunts back at him, examining the containers set on the folding table near the bed. Water jug, gourd of half-dried herbal maceration, a small jar that stinks of alcohol and eucalyptus, another small jar of milk, and a deep bowl, a pot really, mostly full of the thick gray porridge, long gone cold. She doesn't want it, but she scoops out a handful and scrapes it into her mouth and swallows it, anyway. “Eat,” she says.

“Come back to bed,” Max says. 

She blinks at him slowly. “I'm _on_ the bed.” 

“I mean, lie down.” 

“You know who was the last person to tell me what to do?” she muses, swallowing more porridge. It almost tastes good, she's so hungry.

Max smiles, just as calm, his body angled in a leonine posture of crooked relaxation. “Believe it was a young girl,” he replies. “With another young girl. And a stick.” 

“They'd kill you with a word from me,” Furiosa murmurs. She hands him the porridge pot and hoists herself to her feet again, grimacing and quivering at the pain. “You'd do well to remember that.” She walks over to the wide mouth of the cave, studying anew the structure of the stone, looking outside, out and down at the ground a hundred feet below. 

“Furiosa,” Max says.

“Hmm.” 

“I see it.” 

“What?” 

“Moon.” 

“I can't—not from here—” 

“In bed, though.”

“Ah,” Furiosa says. 

“Mmm,” he agrees. 

She takes a step toward him. “I'm not like that.”

“I know.” 

“I don't wonder at the moon. It's even more dead than our world.” 

“Of course.”

Another step, and another. “I see it now,” she says. “On your eyes.” A shimmer of the brightest white light, gleaming on the fragile surface of his corneas. Max only hums in acknowledgement, dipping his hand into the porridge, bringing his fingers back to his mouth. 

Her stomach abruptly clenches in hunger. 

She sits beside him. He watches her. She tries to pull the porridge pot away from him, but he holds tight, his face unsmiling, but bright, amused, very present and alive, fascination illuminating his brow and cheeks as much as the faint white light from outside. Resigned, she reaches into the pot and grabs another handful. 

“See,” Max says, and rests his head on her knee.

If she leans down, toward him, the half-moon leaps into existence in the oval window of the cave. At any other angle, the moon hides behind the opposite Citadel tower, but down there, where he lies, it is undeniable and stark, and, yes, seemingly enormous, against the bleached-blue black of the night sky. Another world, or half of one, anyway.

“Oh,” she says. “Now.”

Even so, its cold remote beauty cannot keep her attention very long; it entertains her more to look at the moonshine reflected from Max's face, the glint caught in his eyes. He has downed his handful of porridge, and has now set to licking his fingers clean, popping them into his mouth and sucking them, one at a time, three at a time, then two. Then the thumb. Dirt still rings his fingernails; they aren't that clean. She imagines how they must have washed him, stripping off his clothes so reinforced with dirt and grime they had become an exoskeleton. Peeling him like a grub, revealing him; no time to be sentimental, chop through the fabric with wire shears, searching his body for injury. Drugging him and then going over his entire form with a wet cloth. Or maybe just stripping him and dunking him into the runoff pool by the Organic Mechanic's body shop, dragging him up before he could drown. Dunk him again. Again. Get him solid wet and scrub him with a bristle brush; see what was under there.

Max is now just sucking his fingers for no reason.

“You're staring at me,” Furiosa says.

“I know,” Max replies, releasing his fingers with a wet pop.

With a sigh, she lets herself relax. Down, all the way down. But she can't take that—her separated ribs scream in protest—so she shoves and scrambles and shoulders her way up onto the pillows until her head is sufficiently elevated for her to breathe more easily. Max pushes bedding under the small of her back, his movements as smooth and instinctive as her own. Once she is satisfied, he stretches out beside her, long enough that his feet overhang the edge of the bed. Furiosa reaches over, takes his spit-damp hand in hers, and places it on her side, right where he slipped the knife in. 

“That was a pretty slick move,” she says. He grunts faintly, as if embarrassment or guilt is a physical pain. “How'd you know to do that? I thought you were a cop, not a...” She rolls her eyes, waiting for the word to come to her. “Doctor.” 

“Took a lot of courses on advanced first aid,” he says. “Road accidents. Quick and dirty patch jobs, enough to buy someone a few more minutes, maybe save—” He falls abruptly silent, grimacing. “Emergency medical,” he forces himself to continue. “I was good at it. Better at driving. 'S what mattered more, in the end, anyway.”

Furiosa takes his jaw in her hand and forces him to meet her gaze. “You saved _me_ ,” she says firmly. “You did. You saved them. That matters more.” 

Max can't maintain the eye contact, shaking his head, turning away. “I can't,” he says, “make it right. I—” 

“Hold still,” Furiosa cuts in, and wipes at his cheek. “Porridge on your face.” She relaxes, smiling sweetly. “Now, what were you saying?” 

He just mutters and hums and opens and closes his mouth without saying anything for a long while, and Furiosa's smile spreads all the way across her face. At last he gives up with a sigh and a fleeting smile. “I'd… like to... see what...hmm, what they did. What I did wasn't enough to save you.” 

Just enough to keep her from dying in his arms. She looks him over; he's a mess, too, maybe even more than he notices. Busted finger splinted with a hard-plastic rod made out of a broken window crank. Blasted eardrum. Right hand and left knee swaddled in bandages. Bruises and cuts all over his face, his bare arms. “Maybe you've heard this before,” she says slowly, “but you can see mine if I can see yours.” 

She can feel just how much he doesn't want that. Even with her, that reluctance to even risk exposing his true self, even just how it looks. How it looks equals what it means. Who he is. What he’s worth. To an enemy or those who wish to exploit him. But she is neither.

His name is his soul. But he'd given it to her. 

She squeezes his hand.

If she has any reluctance on her own part, it's that she is afraid to see it for herself, know how far down she'd been brought by the battle. Like any War Boy she reveres her scars; like any War Boy she dreads having to see the Organic and submit to whatever he considers best for repairing her. But the Organic is gone. She never again has to sit on a table and spread her legs for his interference, even when what plagued her was on her arm or her neck. Always had to “check,” that repulsive bastard, of course with the Immortan Joe's full approval. He had probably gotten off on the thought of the Organic fiddling about with her down there, and her unable to do anything about it. She could be a War Boy—an Imperator—and a good one—but Joe would never let her forget who owned her, mind and eyes and fight and cunt, too. If the Organic wanted to mess with it, she had to let him. 

If she could bring a man to life just to be able to kill him again, she would ask for two chances. 

 _This is my body. **Mine**. It belongs to me. I am not a thing._  

She hooks her fingers under the edge of her tunic and lifts it over her head, careful not to strain her ribs. Max watches avidly but patiently, and as soon as they are revealed, he only has eyes for the bandages thickly enclosing her ribs. 

“May I?” he asks quietly, almost swallowing the words. Furiosa finds that, now, she is the one that can't speak; she is the one shaking. She only nods in reply. Skillfully, gingerly, his fingers find the end of one bandage, stuck fast to itself with tree-gum, and begins to unwind her. 

He is careful, so careful, painstakingly slow and gentle, enough that Furiosa wants to scream at him to get it over with, to show her the worst. Eventually the bandage loosens and drops into a heap at her waist, striped with the dried sap of the bloodwood tree. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, soothing herself, as he undoes the second bandage. 

Purple-red lumps of inflamed tissue surround two very small, neat wounds, one sutured, one not; the unsewn one is the hole Max gave her. It is now perfectly round, about the diameter of a pencil, developing multiple layers of different scab and scar tissue. Max examines it with absorption. “Looks like… a tube was inserted, to let the air out, but it’s been removed. A few days back.” He frowns quizzically. “I think we might have been sleeping for longer than just a couple of days.”

“No wonder I feel so rested,” Furiosa says dryly. 

He gives a chuckle and smiles at her. She can tell the exact moment he notices her bare breasts; it's like he disappears into himself for a few seconds, and then he looks her in the eye again, his expression unreadable. She sighs and puts her hand on her left breast, cradling the scar that scores through the bottom of the nipple and traces across her chest, across her belly. “Happened with my arm,” she explains. “I was a lancer. Car I was in rolled. Crushed my hand. Big piece of my guts hanging out. I didn’t even notice my tit. Not that it mattered...” Her words sputter to a halt. She's not even sure what she was trying to say. 

Whatever it was, he reaches for her, her abbreviated arm, holding the nub gently on the palm of his hand, caressing it, then stroking with a smooth, firm touch. There's nothing Furiosa can do to suppress the writhing motion of her body, the waves of gooseflesh that ride across her skin. 

“'S beautiful,” he mumbles. He traces the scar, over and up and through and onto. Somehow that nipple is more sensitive than the other; feels like he is tracing a line of fire through her loins, through her arm, down into the missing hand.

“I survived,” Furiosa points out. “That’s what matters.” Somehow her right hand has gone into his hair, stroking through it, stroking his scalp. Lightly scratching his scalp with her dull fingernails. Max catches her hand and brings it to his mouth. Angling at him, from the other side, Furiosa trails her lips against the back of his hand. 

But then she sits back, fixing him with her stare. “I want to see your knee,” she tells him. 

Max gives a little hum of resignation, and lets her hand go. She even sits up a little, her curiosity doing a better job of relieving her pain than the herbal sludge had. 

He gives her one last long-suffering look and figures out the straps of the knee brace. His legs are lean in size, but thick in muscle; he is not meant to be a thin man, but a brawler with a touch of extra flesh shielding the brawn. High-octane blood indeed. His survival doesn't make sense anyway, let alone being as rudely healthy as he is. He slides the brace off and props it on the floor, beside the metal bar and the empty bucket, and unwinds the cloth from his knee.

She doesn't gasp at the sight, but her throat aches. He'd been shot from behind, somehow leaving his kneecap intact, but shearing off plenty of the flesh surrounding it. It's like seeing gnarled roots, or a woman's hair in plaits, but comprised of scar tissue of several different types, only some of it on the surface recognizable as skin. She shakes her head. “Large caliber shotgun?” she guesses.

“Mmm,” Max says noncommittally. “I ran him under the wheels of a rig.”

Furiosa frowns. “You don't seem satisfied.” 

“Can't be,” says Max. “Never can.” He isn't looking at her. “I see his fucking eyes every night. Every day.” His voice lowers to a croak. “Wanted to erase him. Did the opposite.” 

She can only nod in agreement. The drugs probably knocked her out solidly enough that her dreams of late haven't stuck with her. And by—by Whatever, she was satisfied as hell to have exterminated Joe, and restful sleep was only due right by her. By the sun, or whatever. She isn't sure what to swear by anymore. The Vuvalini only swore by Her, the all-encompassing Her of existence. Her Above or Her Below or By the Great Mother's Lucky Saggy Tit. 

A smile flickers onto her lips as she remembers the oath. “Now, show me your back. An infection from sloppy marking can kill you.”

“I... feel all right,” Max drawls reluctantly.

Furiosa presses her lips together. “Take off your shirt,” she says wearily. “And put your body against me. And pull up the covers. I won't gawk; I just feel like I can smell you going wrong.”

Max, resigned, sits up and strips off his shirt, turns his back to her, and draws up the blankets. There's just enough light, barely, for Furiosa to make out the scarring, the ink, the clear, shiny scabs dotting the skull brand at the back of his neck. They'd pressed it in hard, searing the flesh, but the branding iron had been hot enough not to take any skin with it when it was withdrawn. The descriptions on his back share space with stripes of old scars, new slashes, wear and tear from being strapped down and flung about like a doll on a stick. Furiosa braves the cold long enough to sit up and dampen a short length of gauze with the eucalyptol. “There's a spot going bad. I'm going to clean it. This'll sting.”

He doesn't flinch.

Furiosa tugs at his shorts. “Stop being absurd,” she says.

“Why don't _you_ take 'em off?” he mutters.

“Because I need for _you_ to do it,” she explains. “I know better than to risk spooking you.”

“I wouldn't—” he begins, turning back to her. She pulls him up to her and presses her mouth against his.

The kiss is brief; she pulls away again almost immediately, examining every muscle in his face for a reaction. Naturally, he looks baffled. This pleases her, calms her. “Have you ever been kissed before?” she asks.

“Y...yes,” he replies, as if she should have assumed that. “I had a child.”

“ _I_ had a child,” Furiosa replies. She rubs her thumb against his deafened ear, against the side of his neck. “But I'd never been kissed.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Max speaks again, cautiously, quietly. “Your child—”

"Was killed. Like yours.” She won't put him through staring into her eyes, and truth be told, she's not sure she could stand it herself. “A baby girl,” she elaborates. “Not perfect. But alive.” She shrugs. “Joe didn't need girls. Especially imperfect ones.”

Max softly groans, her hand against his throat, catching the rumble of sound.

“I don't know if I can fix what's broken,” she tells him, her hand at his throat, her nub held between his hands again, his fingers tracing the scar at her chest. She takes a deep breath, as deep as pain will allow. “Will you help me? See if I can? If I can even try?”

And so he kisses her forehead.

He kisses her nose. Her eyelids. Her cheekbones, the lines of her jaw. She is surging toward his lips with hers, desperate to get on with it, the learning and the knowing of it. This is her only chance. He is an oasis, impossible and miraculous; if she cannot reach him, ease herself with what he has to give, she will not survive.

And so she ends up grabbing him by the face and bringing their lips together. It makes him chuckle, and she knows that she's done the right thing.

...to be continued... 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bye, Cheedo" is very much "bye, Felicia."  
> •  
> "country matters" - Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2.  
>  _HAMLET_  
>  Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
> 
> _OPHELIA_  
>  No, my lord.
> 
> _HAMLET_  
>  I mean, my head upon your lap?
> 
> _OPHELIA_  
>  Ay, my lord.
> 
> _HAMLET_  
>  Do you think I meant country matters?
> 
> _OPHELIA_  
>  I think nothing, my lord.
> 
>  _HAMLET_  
>  That’s a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.  
>   
> •  
> "Oh, you're the moon now" - in my headcanon, the Dag is essentially Luna Lovegood.  
> •  
> I guess chapter 3 will have all the smut - this chapter just structured itself. Oh well, it'll be epic! Stay tuned! Updates as fast as I can write and edit 'em! I got no beta, so please bear with my typos and forgetfulness...


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa. Max. Midnight and moonlight, and they're still a little medicine-headed, thus uninhibited. Hot sex, at once schmoopy, confrontational, and heartbreaking, because it's Max and Furiosa.
> 
> Just a sex bonbon for my fandom. <3

_Feel it come_

_I don’t know_

_How long it’s gonna_

_Stay with me_

_I’ll let desire be_

—Tame Impala, “Desire Be Desire Go”

 

In the cool darkness of a cave, in a bed once claimed by the Tucker Mechanic, lead farmer of the Citadel, breathing in the damp oxygen of a thousand growing plants, Max and Furiosa kiss.

It is really only working for one of them. While Max gladly loses his thoughts in the utter glory of every aspect of her mouth, the tastes and textures of the sublime delicacy inside her, Furiosa opens her eyes and stares in bafflement at the circle of lantern-light on the curved ceiling, somewhat alarmed at the hot, fleshy thickness of his ravenous tongue, at how strangely juicy and slick her mouth became at the invasion. She feels like she's drooling. It seems like a waste of hydration, somehow, the reticence as hardwired as listening for the sound of engines echoing in the desert.

He breaks the kiss, feeling her mouth go slack, eyes anxiously searching her face. “All right?” he murmurs.

“Enough,” she admits, stroking the dip of his back to reassure him. She shrugs a little. “It’s hard enough to breathe.”

He raises his eyebrows and pouts theatrically. He looks ridiculous, kiss-swollen lips protruding even further, and Furiosa can’t help grinning. He arches up against her hand, like an animal eager to be petted. “Yeah? Getting a bit dizzy?” he asks, smiling roguishly. “Can’t handle how good it is?”

Furiosa gazes at him, unembarrassed. She knows her adoration is written all over her face; there’s no way he could miss it. “Not used to it. It's just a... little much right now. You’ve got a _big_ mouth.”

Max grunts in reluctant, indulgent understanding, plants another kiss on her forehead, and nibbles at the corners of her lips. She ruffles his hair and tugs one of his jug-handle ears. “'S all right,” he replies, “we'll do a bit more later.” He sits up, though, and Furiosa groans aloud at the loss of body contact. “Beautiful girl,” he whispers, rubbing his warm hands over her breasts and belly before turning back to the long table to grasp the water jug. He takes a big swallow of water, looking at her stretched out shamelessly with the moonlight silvering one edge of her, the lantern-light beveling the rest of her in tarnished gold.

“Beautiful Max,” she whispers in reply. She accepts a sip of water, and slides down the bed until her face is level with his knee.

Some of Max’s drink of water threatens to go down the wrong pipe. He coughs and sputters, drooling water all down his bare chest. Furiosa just glances up at him, murmurs, “What am I going to do with you, fool?” and presses her lips against the mass of scar tissue that is his knee.

He arches back, groaning in surprise and pleasure. She kisses the knee all over, every different layer of scar receiving a different kiss, from firm presses of her lips to light, flickering touches of her tongue. By the time she has adored every part of it, and lifts her head to look at him, Max is clenching the mattress in his fists and a sheen of sweat dampens his temples. He tries to focus his blurry vision on her face, on the expression of dark, frankly dangerous lust in her keen eyes, but the intensity gets the better of him and he has to seek refuge in the void behind closed eyelids.

“I like your scars, too,” she whispers, stroking his cheek, his eyelids, brows, and lips. All scarred. All warm and alive. Her hand slides down to his neck, pulling him closer, down, next to her. “Touch mine.”

“Nnh,” Max grunts, quivering with restrained impatience, his hands stroking and squeezing the taut bulbs of her shoulders. Furiosa raises her hand and nub and shoves his hands onto her breasts. He is shaking, but his grasp is expert, firm but not hard enough to hurt, her tits fitting well into his hands, a little more than his palms can contain. Her scarred breast is warmer than the other, the nipple stiff and rigid as he passes the base of his fingers over them, side to side, popping the peak up and down, between and back under. Furiosa's breath shudders. He holds the nipple between two fingers and licks in a slow, wet, hard circle.

“Ah, Mothers,” Furiosa gasps, her hips awkwardly bucking against him. When Max glances up at her in surprise, he sees her face and chest blushing vivid red.

“Okay?” he asks.

She hauls in deep, desperate breaths. Max takes her hand and strokes the palm comfortingly. “Ah,” she explains when she can speak, “I just about…ah, just about went off.”

There's more than a hint of smugness in Max's smile. “Yeah?”

She blinks at him, eyes already glazed with desire. “Shouldn't… shouldn't happen. Not this fast. Not with a man.”

“Mmm?” Max hums curiously. He begins to mouth the other nipple.

“I only... come that fast... when I'm on a motorcycle,” says Furiosa, half breathless, half smoky and amused. “Usually, I need a machine.”

“Hmm-m!”

“Sometimes, when I'm driving the Rig. Customized the tranny to give me just the right shake. That perfectly modulated, _hard_ vibration. Fuck... what a perfect ride. Max. Oh, Mothers—that—that is—” She bites her lip, hard, unties and tosses her loincloth aside. She hastily scrubs her nub between her legs. Max moans, losing his concentration. Roughly, she grabs his hand, and sticks it into the space between her bare thighs.

His hesitation vanishes. His palm rubs firmly against her, slow pressure wearing a path through thick, soft hair. Instead of kissing her mouth, he sucks on her plump, fleshy earlobe, licks a path across her ear, his tongue exploring curves and hollows. She pulls him against her, savoring his hardness, the way it throbs against her leg. Her hand only holds his body close, pressing into the small of his back, as if keeping him in place, but her nub caresses his bare belly, his sides, his hips, her skin learning his.

In one moment, everything changes. His callused palm pulls her dry outer lips up and apart and in the next stroke exposes her clitoris to his touch. She shudders wildly against him, moaning a long, broken “ _Uh-h-h!_ ”

Max stops and takes his hand away.

“Hey.” Furiosa can bark even when she's breathless. “What the fuck.”

“Gonna bandage you back up,” he says matter-of-factly. “So if you keep jerking about like that, you won't bleed all over us both when your wounds open up.”

“I think that's the most words I've ever heard you say at once,” Furiosa mutters.

Max gives her a quick, crooked smile, and kisses the corner of her mouth. Furiosa grabs him by the ears, pulls him back, opens her mouth over his and slides her tongue inside. Before he can get into the kiss, she pulls back again and gives him a cool stare, her eyes smoldering with hidden laughter. “Well,” she says, sitting up with a grunt and a grimace, “get on with it.”

He quickly winds the bandages back around her ribs, carefully leaving her nipples exposed. The tree-gum adhesive is hardly sticky anymore, so Max has to knot the bandages to keep them in place. As he ties the knots, he nibbles and licks her nipples into aching, trapped peaks, stiff islands of flesh between rivers of bone-colored cloth. When he’s satisfied that the bandages will hold, he grasps a nipple between the fingers of each hand, and stares into Furiosa's eyes, pinching and twisting as hard as he dares. Her toes curl against the bare skin of his leg.

He can smell her. They can both smell her. The air swirls thick with pheromones. Furiosa shudders as Max slides his left hand down her torso, her belly, through her nether hair and back to the exposed, tender, wet skin. His right hand remains on her nipple, now squeezing, rolling the bit of flesh between his thumb and the side of his forefinger. She grimaces again, but this time, in surging pleasure. Thighs tense, hips canted up. Demanding. Her cunt grows ever damper and hotter under his cupping, pressing hand. She sighs in approval, uses her own hand to help. “Yes,” she murmurs, leaning back against the cushions, knees falling away from each other. “Good...”

“You like that,” he says. Both hands on her inner thighs, he spreads her legs wide, and settles his broad shoulders between them. When he again rubs against her vulva with his palm, his hand comes away sopping wet. With his face framed by her thighs, he gazes imploringly at her, a penitent seeking absolution. “More?”

Furiosa smiles, nods, strokes her hand through his hair, marking him with her scent. The slickness is getting everywhere. He licks his palm clean, and briskly lowers his head to apply his tongue to her directly.

“Yes,” she says again, gasping faintly. “ _Oh_ —!”

He needs a last look into her eyes. One more look shared before equals before he becomes her slave. “Never been kissed,” he muses. “Had this?”

“Oh, yeah,” she tells him, bold and casual, eyes glittering. “And I loved it.” Her smile fades slightly. “It was a long time ago,” she admits. “Before I became Imperator. But—oh, we got up to it, sometimes, in the barracks.”

“War Boy business?” His lips move against hers, kisses her opening. Her hand slides down between his mouth and her cunt; she dips her fingers inside and paints his lips with the slickness. He sucks her fingers clean as she explains to him.

“Yeah. Bunks always stinking of spooge and sweat and shit. Half the time it might as well have been fighting. Practically was. Mostly jockeying for position, but sometimes they'd pair off. Never lasts long, not with the half-lives, but for a moment there's something else in the world. Takes the sting out of not being lifted to Valhalla after a raid. Mostly I was able to avoid it. Hard enough to deal with those smegheads. But sometimes… Even I have needs. I set boundaries, though—no War Boys. Never unarmed. Clothes stay on. And no fucking. And whoever tried would die by my hand. I had to kill three before everyone got the message.”

“Point taken,” he grunts, adding a heartfelt sigh of disappointment.

She strokes his hair and tugs on his ears. “Hmmm... _you're_ not a War Boy, Max.”

Holding her gaze, pinning her with eye contact, he uses the forefingers of both hands to spread her outer lips, opening her, and, still looking into her eyes, he presses his thick, wet, muscular tongue inside. She throws her head back and hisses through her teeth. “Now,” she says, “stop talking.”

He drinks from her. She is so wet it hardly makes sense to him, and he can't think, anyway. He just wants more. Straightforward animal hunger. He never thought he'd ever experience this again; had even given up thinking about it. Given up wanting it. So many things he wants that he'll never have again. Ice cream. The fresh smell of a morning at the beach. Laughter and cold cans of lager. The taste of a woman, the feel of her fanny melting in his mouth, the knowledge that he gave her pleasure she could barely contain. Maybe there's a chance of something good, something worth living for, even in this world.

“Furiosa,” he whispers, reverent and humbled.

Almost on its own, one of his forefingers slides into her. Impossible, all of it, her wetness, her cunt both sucking him in and yet so tight it almost hurts his finger. Furiosa's body jerks again, but the movement is mostly controlled. “Max,” she moans, breath coming in gasps. He nods, tongue up and down across her clit, pushing his finger in deeper. “I'm close,” she says. “Can you feel it?” He can absolutely feel it. Her sticky-slick thrumming pulse, the tight cords of the tendons in her groin trembling. He grips her bottom in his hands and pulls her in closer, knocking against her pelvic opening with his chin. Gripped by pure instinct, or memory, or both, he slides two fingers inside her—her groan rises in pitch, like she's at the top of her gear—and feels around until he finds that tender, softer spot that seems to connect to her heart. _Jessie's favorite._ He taps it, rubs in a circle with his fingertip, and with his tongue, circles her clitoris in the opposite direction. For the first time in countless years he thinks of his wife without horror, guilt, loss. Remembers making love to her, and feels nothing but good about it.  _Jessie's favorite. Honor her with this. Make it good._ He pours his concentration into the movements; he is good at this; he can pat his head and rub his tummy at the same time. Shoot and drive. Give her this. Save her life. _Make it the best she ever had._

Furiosa tries to suppress the sounds rising through her chest, but they get the better of her. She gasps, mews, moans, and finally roars as the orgasm splits itself in two, then three and four. Max conducts her like an orchestra. She knocks her head backwards, but only impacts the cushion and the blankets, and shoves her hand into her mouth, biting down, legs kicking helplessly. When Max withdraws his hand, he is wet nearly to the elbow, and his beard is damp and matted. It’s a good time to kiss her. She accepts his eager tongue hungrily, sucking on it as taking sustenance back from him.

She pulls away to gasp for breath. The cold damp air is a godsend; better still is his fiery body, all scars and knots and trembling animal strength. “So good,” she murmurs. “Just so good.” She kisses the sides of his face, slips her tongue into the edges of his lips. He gazes down at her, forehead furrowed; he looks so worried. A lazy smile spreads across her face.

“Engine's running,” she says. She reaches down for him, and without hesitation, circles her fingers around his cock. “Let's go.”

He holds back for a moment, shuddering, trying to calm himself. His cock has leaked all over her leg, her slim calf and scarred thigh. Wanting to join in. He hasn't even touched it himself, and there it is, twitching and dripping in her hand. “I won’t hurt you,” he promises her. “I don't... want to hurt you.”

“I'm not afraid,” she growls. She takes his lower lip between his teeth, not biting down, just showing him she could if she wanted to. “Just give me more. Don’t be afraid of yourself. I can take it. We're alive. We're as safe as it’s possible to be. Give it to me and don’t fucking hold back.”

Max's hesitation goes on for so long that Furiosa shoves him over onto his back, spreads her legs around his hips, and nudges her wet self against him. “Do you have any idea how much I want this?” she hisses at him. She’s so slippery, so hot and twitchy that they could both easily just get off with the rubbing, the slight friction of skin on skin, and for a moment she’s tempted to spare them both the experience. It's been so long; they've been through so much, maybe they really ought to just go back to sleep while they can. But—then—he’s in _just_ the right place, the head nudging just inside, and her cunt spasms so hard in its eagerness to get him inside that the brief perfect contact is broken. They both groan, and then laugh. “Fool,” she murmurs. “Come on, now.” He holds the base of his cock steady, and with her right hand slots him in, pushes, doesn't give up when it hurts. “ _Yes_. That.”

“Fuck…! Oh, God!” Max croaks.

“God,” Furiosa echoes thoughtlessly, her interior muscles flexing and fluttering in distress, not knowing what to do, how to get him in there, where she wants it. It's going to hurt a lot more. She shouldn't be shy. She wonders if it hurts him, and her cunt figures it out, and she slides down onto him until he is significantly inside her.

Oh, it hurts, and it's magical. She can't move. It has been months since there was anything inside her at all, and years since it was anything this size—maybe even since Joe, whose arrogance was unfortunately matched with a proper bruiser of a schlanger. She can’t really compare them, though—she was never this wet with Joe, the least reason of which she was simply too young at the time. Now, though, she remembers what she’d been told as a child, that a Vuvalini didn’t even _know_ how to properly fuck for the first ten thousand days of her life. Couldn't. Wasn't ready for the real pleasure. She has never been this wet in her life; she didn't think it was possible. Max is a quivering mess; he’s holding back so hard that tears pour over his temples. She grabs his hip and pulls him in further, groaning, taking it. Unafraid. This pain is worth it.

Gradually, Max regains some sense. He pulls out all the way. “Wait,” he says, superseding the protest already on Furiosa's lips. He repositions Furiosa so that she is now lying on her left side, her handless arm stretched above her head to balance her weight. He swings her leg up and over his waist, spreading her legs, but in such a way that her back and her sides are relaxed. Furiosa hums in approval of his cleverness, and he kisses her again, quick, in thanks. In friendship, in a way. Thanking her for trusting him. Thanking her for running with him, running into this, heedless of how impossible it is. He lies next to her, not quite on top, slotting himself in, the head of his cock just sliding in as true and smooth as a well-oiled bolt, effortlessly bottoming out, and producing, from her, a throaty, almost grateful moan.

He knocks his forehead against hers, kisses her again, seeks out her hand with his and locks their fingers together. “Yes,” he says, “yes, like that, see? Better, yeah?”

She nods convulsively, her mouth open, moaning continuously now. Tears in her eyes, now, too. Trying to form words, perhaps, but lacking in any coherence. Hips arching toward him and away. She pulls her hand free, tightens the fingers into a fist, and pounds against his arm, his shoulder. Caressing him, then hitting him again, and moaning. He grabs her hand out of the air and places it gently against his mouth. “Now—be good, Furiosa,” he admonishes her.

“Ha! I never said I couldn’t hurt _you_ ,” she shoots back, giving his face a quick backhand slap. He groans, his cock twitching hard inside her, and she adds, “Besides, you—oh!—you _like_ that, don’t you?”

He gives her one of his exasperated frowns. “I like not being hurt even more. Now—relax.”

Somehow she digs her toenails into his back. “Fuck you. Fuck me. Oh, Mothers, this is perfect. So—fucking—perfect—”

Now he can't find words, either. Her hand tugs in his hair, wrenches at one of his nipples, digs its fingernails into the scar on the back of his neck. He wants to plunge himself into her like a drill into an oil well, feel her gush around him. He leans back, pulls her leg up over his shoulder, thrusts into her sharply and lightly, bends over her to flick his tongue across her lips, holds her hips in his hands so that she's off the surface of the bed, and can thrust against him harder, rougher than he gave to her.

Furiosa's mind spins; she feels that she could get as addicted to Max’s cock as Joe warned everyone they could become addicted to Aqua-Cola. She’s almost afraid of how much joy it gives her. But not just his schlanger—all of him, head to toe, every cell of his body, every thought, every flinch. How being with him is like a madness that causes sanity. How he nourishes her like water.

He has no real idea how he has held on so long, but when she arches way back, shoulders off the bed, spearing herself onto his cock as she gives out her orgasmic roar again, he feels a snuffing sort of relief inside him and he holds her steady and safe; that's all he wants, steady and safe. And then a wave comes and all but knocks him over, a crack of electric recoil snapping up from his crotch to his brain. He roars, too, throaty and helpless, his mind snapping out of the world and into white-hot brilliant bliss.

She cradles his cheek in her hand and stares into his eyes. “Stay with me,” she breathes. Her eyelids drop closed, her body going limp.

Max stares back at her for a while, shaking and dazed, his head weighted with sudden exhaustion. There is nothing to say, no way to reply to that, and at any rate, she's fallen asleep, a soft smile on her bruised face. What could he say? Nothing would ever get to the heart of it. Nothing he could say would ever be an essential truth. No way to know about tomorrow. He should leave now, while everything is as perfect as it could be, and take the scent of her ravenous sex on his hands… to what? Wash off in dust and blood, and try to forget? Or tears, as his longing for her overwhelmed him in the nightmares yet to come, somewhere down the road?

Or stay, and fight, and die at her side?

Furiosa, glowing in lantern-light, smiling, holds him firmly and protectively against her shoulder with the arm that doesn't have a hand. He kisses the perfect curve of her lips, and it seems to make her smile more.

One last sweet sleep, and tomorrow they'll be back at it again. Back into the battle. But… for now…

There is now.

Gathering the last of his strength, he digs up the blankets, and also their shed clothes, covering them both against the humid chill of the night. He curls next to Furiosa, allowing himself to be held by her, and dozes off, losing count of the kisses he presses against her forehead.

_=the end=  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our fandom is the best fandom. My great thanks to all the amazing writers inspired by this crazy cartoon of guzzoline and sentiment. I just got my bluRay today so I will be up for WAY more - so keep writing and keep being inspirational. (And madly, madly prolific.)

**Author's Note:**

> My first MM fic after having been a fan since the eighties. Once again I live and breathe the Wasteland and its glorious possibilities. Written for my dear friend the Lady Jake, who can actually handle my writerly neuroses with grace and support, and who is as kami-crazy about this stuff as I am. But this is also for all the insanely great fic writers who have entertained, touched, taught, and thrilled me for the last few months - this fandom is spectacular!
> 
> All song lyrics by Tame Impala, an Australian band I discovered shortly after Fury Road came out.


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